Otello, Royal Opera House, review: this ugly production lacks grandeur

Widely disliked when it was unveiled in 2017, Keith Warner’s production of Otello does nothing to ingratiate itself on its first revival. Soporifically dark yet weirdly lacking in any atmosphere of menace or intrigue, it is hobbled by brutalist sets designed by Boris Kudlicka consisting of little more than sliding walls, perforated at intervals with sheets of latticed metalwork. 

Warner interprets the action conventionally, the only striking element being an Otello whose skin colour remains white – in the light of current sensibilities over race-blind casting and the libretto’s only casual interest in the character’s Moorish psychology, this seems justifiable. But several people approached me in the interval to bemoan the dumping of Elijah Moshinsky’s visually more enticing staging (dating back to 1987) in favour of something so dismally bleak.  

A  largely new cast was led by the American tenor Gregory Kunde in the title role. Although he is in his mid 60s, his voice remains in excellent nick, with plenty of power in the chest for the heroics of his first entrance and the second-act collapse into paranoia.  He also sings every note with good musical taste, clean intonation and clear diction. But you can’t have everything, and his acting is rudimentary - he does not convince either as a lover or the eerily unhinged murderer of the final scene. What moved Verdi in writing the opera was the idea of a great leader and warrior duped, humiliated and shamed, but Kunde projected the same rather shambling persona throughout. There was no inner journey, no moral descent.